Record low Antarctic sea ice extent could signal shift

In late February, the ocean area covered by ice slipped below the symbolic barrier of two million square kilometers (around 772,000 square miles) for the first time since satellite records began in 1978, according to a study in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Researchers found that the key driver of ice loss was change in temperature, though shifts in ice mass also played a lesser role.

Both the North and South pole regions have warmed by roughly three degrees Celsius compared to late 19th-century levels, three times the global average.

Antarctica encountered its first recorded heatwave in 2020, with an unprecedented 9.2C above the mean maximum, and in March a research center in eastern Antarctica saw temperatures soar 30 degrees above normal.

But extreme aberrations of this kind are recent.

Unlike sea ice in the Arctic, which has diminished by three percent a year since the late 1970s, sea ice in Antarctica expanded over the same period by one percent per decade, albeit with large annual variations.